Credit: Dario Acosta | DG

About

Daniil Trifonov

Piano

Born in Nizhniy Novgorod in 1991, Daniil Trifonov has emerged as one of the most talked-about young musicians in the world. His reputation for outstanding performances, musical insight and expressive intensity has already surpassed the attention he received during the 2010/11 season when he won medals at the Chopin Competition in Warsaw (Third Prize), the Rubinstein Competition in Tel Aviv (First Prize) and the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow (First Prize and Grand Prix, an additional honour bestowed on the best overall competitor in any category). In 2013, he was also awarded the prestigious Franco Abbiati Prize for Best Instrumental Soloist by Italy’s foremost music critics. Prior to that, Trifonov received awards at the Scriabin Competition of Moscow and at the San Marino International competition, and received a Guzik Foundation Career Grant in 2009.

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Recent and upcoming concerto highlights include the Berlin Philharmonic with Rattle, Vienna Philharmonic with Nelsons, London Symphony and Mariinsky Orchestras with Gergiev, Israel Philharmonic with Mehta, Philharmonia Orchestra with Maazel, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra with Harth-Bedoya, Philadelphia Orchestra with Macelaru, San Francisco Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra with Vanska, Russian National Orchestra with Pletnev, New York Philharmonic with Gilbert, Cleveland Orchestra with Gaffigan, Boston Symphony with Guerrero, Chicago Symphony and Royal Philharmonic with Dutoit, Orchestra Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with Elder, Oslo Philharmonic with Petrenko and Danish Radio Symphony with Noseda. In 2017/18 he will perform throughout Germany with the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Vladimir Jurowski, as well as touring with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Daniele Gatti, to include performances in Vienna, Prague, Dresden and Paris.

In the 2016/17 season, Trifonov was Capell-Virtuos with the Staatskapelle Dresden, which included concerts at the BBC Proms, Salzburg Easter Festival and Vienna Musikverein, and performed the complete Rachmaninov Piano Concerto cycle with the Mariinsky Orchestra and Munich Philharmonic with Gergiev. Trifonov appeared as soloist with orchestras including Berliner Philharmoniker, Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich, The Cleveland Orchestra, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Royal Stockholm Philharmonic, Filarmonica della Scala, Philadelphia Orchestra, Rotterdam Philharmonic and Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra and gave his debut performances in Australia with the Sydney, Melbourne and West Australian Symphony Orchestras. In 2016, he was Artist of the Year at the Gramophone Awards, and was also awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society Award in the Instrumentalist category.

Daniil Trifonov began his musical studies at the age of five. He studied at Moscow Gnesin School of Music in the class of Tatiana Zelikman (2000-2009). From 2006 to 2009 he also studied composition and has continued to write piano, chamber and orchestral music since then. When he premiered his own piano concerto in spring 2014, the Cleveland Plain Dealer commented, “Even having seen it, one cannot quite believe it. Such is the artistry of pianist-composer Daniil Trifonov.” Since 2009, he has studied piano at the Cleveland Institute of Music in the class of Sergei Babayan.

In February 2013, Deutsche Grammophon announced the signing of an exclusive recording agreement with Daniil Trifonov. His first recording as an exclusive Deutsche Grammophon artists (Trifonov: The Carnegie Recital) won a Grammy Award nomination. His latest release, Transcendental, was awarded the ECHO Klassik 2017 award for Best Solo Recording for piano music written in the 19th century. His discography also includes a recording of Rachmaninov Variations with the Philadelphia Orchestra and Nézet-Séguin, as well as Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No.1 with Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra, released on the Mariinsky label in 2012. His first CD was released on Decca in 2011, featuring a selection of Chopin solo works.

This 23-year old Russian completely took my breath away... [his playing] left me wishing I'd kept some superlatives in my critic's arsenal unused, so I could bring them out specially for this occasion. He has everything: sensitivity, intelligence, and a technique that has to be seen and heard to be believed.

Sunday Telegraph

There’s a paradoxical dimension to musical prodigies. On the one hand they deliver more than we can realistically demand. On the other we tend to demand more than they can realistically deliver, at least in terms of maturity. But occasionally we find one so far evolved beyond our expectations that all we can do is gasp. Such is the case with Daniil Trifonov.

Financial Times

Trifonov's performance was a marvel, a mixture of exuberance and fabulous subtlety, as remarkable for the delicate precision of his wispy pianissimos as for the irrepressible energy of its grandstanding rhetoric.